Bus services may resume with guidelines: Gadkari

Officials say onus is on Home Ministry to frame the rules

07/05/2020, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT,NEW DELHI

Nitin Gadkari

Bus services may resume soon, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Wednesday.

Addressing a video-conference with members of the Bus and Car Confederation of India, he said: “We may soon start bus transport along with some guidelines. Airlines, railways and bus transport are required to be opened on a certain scale as there are many people stranded,” the Minister said.

Mr. Gadkari said the challenge staring at the Ministry was to strike a balance between ensuring social distancing and commercial viability for bus operations.

Ministry sources said there was no decision yet on reopening road transport and that the guidelines for it would be framed by the Union Home Ministry, followed by the State governments.

Many experts also shared their suggestions for resumption of operations. O.P. Aggarwal from World Resources Institute-India shared recommendations for dealing with reduced ridership and the need for more number of buses to ensure social distancing.

‘More buses required’

“In the beginning, there will be reduced ridership because of a drop in demand as people may continue to work from home as well as due to the need to maintain social distancing. We need to look how we can improve the finances of the operators and how we can have more buses to increase their number on the roads,” Mr. Aggarwal said.

“With one-third of the capacity, how do we improve finances and how do we increase the number of buses? We need to look at the number of idle buses such as tourist buses and inter-city services. Can we get out of contract and stage carriage limitation to use them for city or regional operations? As far as the financial viability aspect is concerned, some financial support will be required, but we also need to look at the tax structure of bus services versus the metro services. There is also a need to revive the national bus rejuvenation programme,” he said.